The Character of God- Part 6

Subtitle:  God is Abounding in Lovingkindness

Exodus 34:6-7.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 12, 2025.

Today, we will look at the fourth description of God’s character from Exodus 34.  God is abounding in lovingkindness!

Let’s look at our passage.

God abounds in lovingkindness in the Old Testament

Even in the English language, we can see that a compound word, like lovingkindness, is having trouble translating the original word.  This is a small Hebrew word, khesed (khe’ sed), but it has a big meaning. 

It essentially has three components to it.  First, it speaks of loving care, and then, it adds generosity.  Lastly, we add a sense of keeping commitment, loyalty.  Thus, God’s khesed is His generous, covenant-keeping love for us.  You might see that the word lovingkindness touches on two of these, but doesn’t quite cover all three aspects. 

There is a wide variety of ways that different translations have translated this.  In fact, even within a particular translation, you may see several different words. However, before we look at some English translations, I want to look at a Greek translation from the 3^rd century B.C. (c. 200 to 250).  This translation is called the Septuagint.

The Septuagint, also shown as LXX, translates this word with a Greek word that means mercy.  On first look, it may seem that they gave up on finding a word, but there is more to it than that.  We do not experience God’s khesed in a vacuum.  Rather, His amazing khesed is in the context of our continual failure to reciprocate with a love that is even remotely close to it.  Rather, humanity has tended toward a stingy, covenant-breaking self-love.  Thus, God’s generous, covenant-keeping love in the face of our unfaithfulness can be definitely understood in the context of mercy.

It is common to distinguish between grace and mercy by this.  Grace is receiving what you don’t deserve, i.e., a gift, but mercy is not receiving what you do deserve, i.e., a pardon.  Of course, the word mercy is more than this.  At its root, there is a concept of misery.  God’s grace touches the guilt of our sin, but God’s mercy goes deeper and touches the misery of our sin.

We see that this is quite a word.  Let me point out some of the choices of English versions.  The New King James Version uses lovingkindness in Exodus 34, but it also translates khesed in other places as “mercy” and even “goodness.”  The New American Standard Bible 1995 also used lovingkindness, but then, in the 2020 edition, changed it to faithfulness.  The New International Version takes the simple route and translates it as love.  The English Standard Version chose steadfast love.  Christian Standard Bible chose faithful love; New Living Translation chose unfailing love; the New English Translation chose loyal love.  They are all very similar, but no one of them capture the whole sense of khesed without requiring the reader to understand its connections to these other concepts.  Thus, God’s love (khesed) is a love like no other.  Let’s look at some examples of its usage in the Old Testament.

The story of Ruth involves a couple, Elimelech and Naomi, who lived in Bethlehem.  A famine came upon the area, and they finally sold everything and moved to Moab with their two sons.  While in Moab, Elimelech dies.  Next, we see that the two sons marry Moabite women.  They live there for over ten years when something happens that is not detailed.  Both sons die, leaving Naomi and the two daughters-in-law alone.  Ruth realizes that her daughters-in-law would be better off to go back to their families.  She also hears that the famine has lifted in Israel, so she plans to go back.

This gives us a beautiful scene where Ruth refuses to go back to her family, but chooses to go with Naomi back to Israel.  Look at her words in Ruth 1:16-18.  “16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.” 18 When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she [e]said no more to her.” (NASB) We need to keep this expression of love in the back of our minds as we jump to their arrival in Israel.

Of course, they have no money to buy back Elimelech’s property, and they wouldn’t be able to work it by themselves even if they did.  We are told that they arrive just as the barley harvest is beginning.  This leads to Ruth deciding to glean what she can from the fields after they have been cut.  She just happens to end up in the fields of a man named Boaz.  Boaz just happens to be a near kinsman to Elimelech.  He ends up being very generous to Ruth because he is aware of Naomi’s situation and Ruth’s commendable, extreme faithfulness to her mother-in-law.

This brings us to the first mention of a generous, covenant-keeping love in Ruth 2:20.  “Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed of the Lord who has not withdrawn his kindness to the living and to the dead.” Again Naomi said to her, “The man is our relative, he is one of our closest relatives.” (NASB)

Here, Ruth returned home the first day and was able to glean almost 5 gallons of cleaned barley.  Naomi is astonished that she could gather so much in one day.  She realizes that someone has been gracious to Ruth and to her.  Several blessings are revealed as Naomi quizzes Ruth.  Ruth ended up in the field of a kinsman, and on top of that, a kinsman who was inclined to be generous to her.  The version above chose to translate khesed with the lesser term kindness.  However, Naomi uses khesed precisely because Boaz has demonstrated a generous, covenant-keeping love towards them.  He is not necessarily in a covenant with them, but as their kin, he does have a commitment to help them as best he can.  Why is Boaz being so kind, or generous?  Well, let’s look at his words in the next chapter.

Naomi begins to realize that God is helping them, and Boaz is a unique guy.  She counsels Ruth on how to discretely propose that Boaz take on the role of the kinsman redeemer by marrying her and raising up a child for Elimelech’s line.  This leads to Ruth coming to the field late in the evening while Boaz is sleeping among the harvest as a security.  She uncovers his feet and rests at his feet, waiting for the cool air on his feet to wake him up.  When Boaz wakes up, he sees a woman lying at his feet and says this.  “He said, ‘Who are you?’ And she answered, ‘I am Ruth your maid. So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a close relative.’ 10 Then he said, ‘May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich.’”

Just as we saw Naomi declaring the actions of Boaz to be khesed, so we have Boaz declaring of Ruth that she has twice shown khesed.  The first time that he has in mind is her faithfulness to come to Israel with Naomi.  Boaz is clearly declaring that she had done an act of khesed.  Yet, her proposal to him to marry her is called an even better khesed.  Maybe it is better simply because it is done towards him.  Regardless, we might ask again, what commitment would Ruth be keeping by asking Boaz to marry her?  First, she is a Moabitess and has every reason to fear marrying a man of a different nation.  Yet, she would do so because it would better her and Naomi’s situation.  Carrying this risk on herself is an act of keeping covenant in difficult circumstances.  Yet, she is also honoring the circumstance of Boaz being the one who was gracious to her.  Apparently, Boaz is much older than her (she is probably mid-twenties).  She might choose to marry simply to eat, but if she was merely following the lusts of her flesh, she would look for a much younger relative, redeemer, to approach with this proposal.  She is being faithful to the fact that it was he who took notice of her and chose to bless her instead of mistreating her.

Thus, David comes from great-grandparents who not only understood what khesed was, but also lived it.

Jacob’s fear of Esau in Genesis 32 is another place where we find this word.  Jacob had taken advantage of his brother when Esau was hungry.  Esau gave Jacob his birthright for a bowl of beans.  Later, Jacob deceived his father and, thereby, swindled Esau out of the blessing.  This led to Jacob fleeing to what is northeastern Syria today.  Over 20 years, he accumulated two wives, twelve kids, and he had many sheep, goats, oxen and donkeys.  Then, God told Jacob to go back to Canaan.

Genesis 32:9-10 is a prayer that Jacob prays to God on the borders of Canaan because he fears what Esau will do to him.  In verse 10, he recognizes that he is not worthy of all the lovingkindness, khesed (generous, covenant-keeping love), that God has given to him.  Lovingkindness is coupled with the word translated in NASB as “faithfulness.”  This is the word that we will look at next week, which is the last description in Exodus 34:6.

Jacob knows that he doesn’t deserve God’s blessing in his life, nor His protection.  Yet, he goes on to ask God to spare him.  He mentions his grandfather and father, recognizing that God’s mercy to him is directly connected to his covenant with them.  He is in a long line of chosen ones to whom God showed great khesed.  Yet, these chosen ones are part of God’s great khesed to humanity.  This brings us back to Israel in Egypt and God’s deliverance.

Israel’s redemption from Egypt comes to a highpoint in Exodus 15.  Israel has just come through the Red Sea in an impossible way, only to see Pharaoh’s army drowned trying to follow them.  On the opposite shore of the Red Sea, Israel sings a song of God’s deliverance.  We find this description in the middle of the song in verses 11 through 13.  “Who is like You among the gods, O LORD?  Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders?  You stretched out Your right hand, the earth swallowed them.  In Your lovingkindness You have led the people whom You have redeemed; in Your strength You have guided them to your holy habitation.”

God is generously keeping his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by rescuing Israel.  Despite all of their failings through worshiping other gods, complaining about Moses and an overall stubbornness in sin in the face of God’s miracles, God has loved them.  They too could say with Jacob, “We are unworthy of Your khesed, O God!” 

This why the intercessions of Moses are so key throughout the Torah.  We saw some of these intercessions while Moses was with Israel at Mt. Sinai, and we saw the generous love that God gave to Israel then.  Yet, God’s khesed did not stop there.  When they get to the Promised Land, they refuse to go in because they see the giants.  They balk and accuse Moses (God) of bringing them to this place to get them killed.  Oh, yes, that makes sense.  God saved you from Egypt and Pharaoh’s army only to sacrifice you to Canaanite giants.  Still, unbelief has never been bothered by its penchant to overlook God’s faithfulness in the past. 

They plan to kill Moses, elect a new leader and then go back to Egypt.  In this context, God gives Moses the same offer again.  He will dispossess Israel and send plagues against them, while making a new chosen nation out of Moses and his descendants.  Numbers 14:17-20 records Moses interceding for Israel again.

“17 But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared, 18 ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.’ 19 Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”  20 So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word…”

Notice here that Moses is quoting God’s description of Himself in Exodus 34 back to Him.  He is calling upon the generous covenant-keeping love of God to pardon Israel’s sin and give them mercy.  They don’t deserve it, but do it for the sake of who You are, for Your character, for Your great name!

God does lay a punishment upon that generation, but it is not one in which they can’t repent and serve God by teaching their children not to do what they did (unbelief and rebellion).  This is a grace that is similar to Adam and Eve.  Yes, difficult things are put upon them.  However, if they will carry those heavy things with faith in God, then those heavy things will do a good work in them, and God will pardon their sins.  Yes, these people will be in the wilderness for another 40 years, but they can teach their kids to avoid the failings that they did.  They can show them the good way instead of becoming angry with God’s discipline in their life.  We can embrace His generous, covenant-keeping love in the midst of his disciplines and become a testimony to others.

There are some other worthy mentions of khesed in the Old Testament.  The book of Hosea emphasizes the khesed of God versus the worthless love of Israel.  Hosea 6:4-7 says, “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?  What shall I do with you, O Judah?  For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and like the dew which goes away early.  5 Therefore I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of My mouth; and the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth.  6 For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.  7 But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; there they have dealt treacherously against Me.”

God’s great khesed deserves a response of khesed towards Him.  Yet, Israel’s khesed was like the dew that quickly dissipates under the heat of the sun (difficulty, trials and temptations).  However, this was not unique to Israel.  Over and over again, whether it be Adam, the pre-flood world, the Tower of Babel generation, the patriarchs, David, Israel, etc., humanity has reciprocated God’s generous covenant keeping love with lip-service, even complete rebellion.  His generous, covenant-keeping love is met with stingy, covenant breaking treachery.  Yet, even so, God’s faithfulness would still respond by sending His Anointed One, Jesus, to create salvation from this problem for whosoever would put their faith in him.  The prophets pointed out this problem and answered that there was still hope because of God’s abounding khesed.

Jesus is the overly generous, covenant-keeping, merciful love of God

The Apostle John speaks of God’s great love given to us (1 John 3:1).  This love is not just about Israel.  Jesus dies on the cross to take the failure of Israel upon himself, but he is also dying for the Gentiles too.  It is in this reality that we can know that God really does love us.  He really has kept His covenant with us as a group (humanity) and as an individual.  In these last days, He is offering an everlasting covenant to whosoever will take Him up on it.  This covenant is really between the Father and Jesus, the perfect, human Son of God.  However, like Boaz with Ruth, we who are moral beggars can come into relationship with Jesus and participate in this covenant.

This is key.  In the face of our failures, the eternal Word of God becomes one of us to bind himself to us forever.  It is a kind of burning the bridges behind.  When Jesus takes on a mortal body, it would one day die, but to be resurrected as a human, but in an immortal, heavenly body, is a form of showing that there is no going back.  Jesus will not turn back until he has completed redemption.  He has inherited all things, and we can too because of our living connection to him.  Yet, it is more than a connection.  He has drawn us close into an intimate relationship.

We should notice throughout the Bible that those who are being cast out, or pushed out, are really being handed over to their sins so that they will repent in the midst of their resultant misery.  The sad results of our willful sin can open our eyes to God’s goodness and lead us to cry out for mercy, for grace.  “Everyone who calls upon the LORD shall be saved!”  (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21).  All of this is in the face of our failures.

Christmas should not be seen as a lovely thing of babies and gifts.  That little baby was birthed into this world with one goal in mind, to go to the cross and glorify God the Father.  He was born into a dark and evil world that truly hated him.  It was worse than an abject failure of humanity to merit anything from God, but an actual positive resistance against His purpose and plan of redemption.

The life of Jesus is the essence of sowing seeds while weeping.  Just as there was at the laying of the foundations of the earth, so too here, there is a melancholy in the midst of God’s confident love towards humanity.  All of this is done because the Lord Jesus knows that there is joy on the other side of this sadness.  The grace of God will bring it to an ultimate good.  In Jesus, the unthinkable, the inconceivable, is there over the top of our complete failure.

Though it is clear that Jesus is the perfect khesed of God towards humanity, we should not miss the reality that Jesus is also the perfect khesed of humanity towards God.  In Jesus, humanity has fully reciprocated the khesed of God with absolutely perfect khesed.  Jesus is the greater Isaac who does not struggle as he is brought to the place of sacrifice and bound to the wood.  There is no Angel of the LORD to intervene.  The greater Isaac is the greater offering that the LORD has provided to redeem humanity.

Jesus is also the greater Boaz.  He is the Son of God’s love, and we can come under his covering because he is a willing kinsman redeemer.  As Naomi counseled Ruth regarding how they could be saved, so we see our own salvation.  Others have told us how to present ourselves to Jesus, in humility, without pretense, simply asking for the grace of being covered and redeemed, asking Jesus to take us under his wing as his bride.

Jesus has the wealth to redeem us.  He has the ability to redeem everything we have lost.  Yet, he also has the heart, the loving disposition, to save us.

Yes, to connect to Christ is to receive an inheritance in the future.  However, it also gets back for us an inheritance in this mortal life.  We don’t know what that fully entails, but by faith, we press forward to take possession of our souls first, and then our lives.  We can do this because Jesus has poured out the Holy Spirit upon those who put their faith in him.  I’m not talking about houses and money.  I am talking about the works that God has determined for us to do from the very laying down of the foundation of the earth.  Let us put our faith in Jesus, listening to the Holy Spirit, trusting the Scriptures, and doing those things that He has called us to do!

Lovingkindness audio

Denying Jesus

Mark 14:66-72.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 10, 2021.

In Matthew 10:32-33, Jesus says, “Whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”  Jesus puts confessing him and denying him in opposite positions, and declares that our present actions toward him will affect his future action towards us.

It is a sobering thought that we will all stand before the Lord, Jesus Christ, and through him give account to God the Father for our lives.  In that day, all the things of this earth will be absent, and it will only matter what our Creator thinks.  It will only matter what I did with Jesus in this life.  Did I deny him, or did I confess him?

Even though God will hold us accountable, He is gracious and merciful.  Our passage today involves the Peter, the disciple of Jesus, denying Jesus three times.  In doing so, he helps us to see the mercy of God to those who are worthy of punishment, but have repented of their sins, picked up their cross, and have followed Jesus.  Praise God that we are not shackled to our worst moments in this life.  Through Jesus, our greatest failures can be forgiven. 

Now, let’s look at our passage.

Peter denies Jesus three times

No doubt, Peter would describe this as the worst day of his life.  Everything that he had been doing for three and a half years was now going up in smoke, and he was powerless to do anything about it.  The worst part of it will be that he was unable to stand by the Lord in his darkest hour.

So, we have Peter in the courtyard of the high priest’s compound warming himself by a fire along with servants and soldiers of the high priest.  The interrogation and trial of Jesus appears to be on a balcony of some sorts.  They cannot hear and see all of the proceedings, but Peter is able to keep tabs on what is happening to Jesus. 

In this situation, Peter is confronted by a servant girl and then later by several other servants.  There is a contrast here of the strength of Jesus and the weakness of his disciples.

Jesus is confronted by the strong “bulls” of Israel.  They are the ones who have great power within Israel, even with being dominated by Rome.  However, Peter is confronted by a servant girl, and other servants of the high priest.  I do not mean to diminish his situation, but rather to point out the contrast.  Peter was not ready for such a confrontation with the big boys, but neither was he ready for this chance to cut his teeth on taking a stand for Jesus.  Our Lord is ready and able for all that our enemy can throw at him, but we are weak and in need of strength, and spiritual growth.  How wonderful it is that our gracious Lord sticks with us and enables us to grow stronger by his Holy Spirit and through our failures.

We are told in the other gospels that this servant girl was the one who was in charge of the door.  Having seen Peter fairly well at the door, she recognizes him as one of the followers of Jesus.  Peter is confronted several times by her on his relationship to Jesus.  The first confrontation is, “You also were with Jesus of Nazareth.”  The second is actually spoken to the group of servants, “This is one of them.”  The third confrontation comes from the group and clearly involves multiple accusation from “those who stood by.”  Mark records one of them recognizing his accent, “Surely, you are one of them for you are a Galilean and your speech shows it.”  It was no secret that the followers of Jesus were Galilean- Judas seems to be the only exception to this.  In John 18:26, we are told that one of the servants happened to be a relative of the man, Malchus, whose ear Peter had cut off with a sword.  “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” 

After each of these three confrontations, Peter denies Jesus instead of confessing his relationship with him.  To deny is to reject the claim of something that is stated, and in this case, thereby rejecting Jesus himself.  He disowns Jesus as his acquaintance, friend, or teacher, and thereby, he becomes guilty of the actions Jesus had warned them of earlier in Matthew 10.  Peter should have confessed Christ.  To confess is to speak the same as, or agree with someone or something.  The statements that Peter is confronted with are true, but he refuses to agree with them (speak the same thing as).  However, because they are statements of relationship, Peter refuses to confess Christ as his Lord and Teacher.

Clearly the servant girl is not physically intimidating, but she can notify the larger group and get Peter arrested too.  It is amazing how people who have very little natural power in this life can suddenly have great power over our choices because of the situation.  Peter’s fear is the true source of her power over him.

We don’t know what is going through Peter’s mind fully.  Perhaps, he intends only to nip it in the bud at the first denial.  Perhaps, he justified it because he was finding out what would happen to Jesus.  Regardless of his justification, there can be no justification for refusing to stand with Christ and denying a relationship with him.  “I do not know this man of whom you speak!” 

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Peter even invokes a curse and swears that he is not lying.  The KJV and the NKJV say that “he began to curse and swear.”  Cursing and swearing here is not cussing with vulgarities and profanities.  He is actually using a curse formula to back up the truth of his statements.  This is similar to our childhood years when we might say to someone regarding our veracity, “Cross my heart, hope to die, poke a needle in my eye.”  Clearly, we were being hyperbolic when we said that- I know of no one who had a needle poked in their eye when it was found out that they lied.

Swearing is similar.  We might say, “I swear on my mother’s grave!”  In Israel, it was common to swear on the altar or the temple, etc.  It was a way of making a kind of informal affidavit that others could hold you to.

We are never told to use a curse formula to back up our statements, and Jesus warned us not to swear by anything either.  Rather, he tells us that we are to let our yes be yes and our no be no.  What a different world this would be if we would operate in such a fashion.  Truthfulness is passé.  Only people who are prone to lying feel the need to swear and invoke curses on themselves in order to get others to believe them.  Of course, Peter is lying now.

By his own words and by his own judgment, Peter is condemning himself eternally.  How could he stand before God with such evidence against him?  These are the kinds of things that would stand against us before God on that day, not to mention that even our thoughts and the schemes of our heart can be brought against us as evidence.

Mark tells us that the rooster crowed for the second time at this point.  Luke tells us that, even as Peter was swearing that he was telling the truth, the rooster crowed the second time.  The gravity of the moment sinks in to Peter as he hears the rooster crow, and then, as Luke records, he looks up to see Jesus looking at him.  Jesus who is in his darkest hour and is even then being accused by others looks over and locks eyes with Peter for a moment.

The crowing of the rooster and the look of Jesus stirs up Peter’s memory.  What seemed like an eternity ago in the upper room, Jesus had told him that he would do this.  He had vehemently denied that he would leave Jesus, and here he was just as vehemently denying Jesus.  Peter is broken emotionally, leaves the area, and weeps bitterly.

It is difficult to come face to face with the weakness of our flesh, especially when we are insistent on seeing ourselves stronger than we are.  However, there is a contrast here between Peter and Judas.  Both are weak in the flesh and fail to stand with Jesus.  However, Peter truly desired to stand with Jesus, and is being tripped up by his flesh.  He has not fallen so as to be beyond recovery.  Judas, on the other hand, did not desire to stand with Jesus, and his flesh leads him to destruction.  God knows our hearts and aids those who are weak and yet still desire Him.

Peter’s mistakes

It would be good for us to pay attention to Peter’s mistakes because they are our mistakes too.

Peter kept his distance from Jesus out of fear instead of courageously choosing to remain by him.  He let his fear of arrest, and the subsequent bodily harm, separate him from Jesus.  He still believes in Jesus, but he can no longer follow Jesus where he is going.  This is also symbolic of a spiritual issue that we must all face.  Just hours before, Jesus had led Peter to a place of prayer and asked him to pray with him.  Notice that Jesus did not ask them to pray for him.  His intention all along was that they would pray for themselves and the coming trial.  Peter’s failure to pray in the garden is directly connected to his failure to confess Jesus in the courtyard.  His failure in private led to his failure in public.  His spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.

Christ is calling us into the Word of God, and into a relationship of prayer.  This is a place where we can wrestle with our flesh and fears before the One who loves us.  When we neglect to shorten the distance between us and Jesus through the communion of reading his word and prayer, we are then at the mercy of our flesh and its inability to follow Jesus.  It is not enough to be a Christian superficially.  We must draw near to Christ in our hearts privately before we will ever be able to stand with him publicly.

A second mistake is that he ends up in the wrong company.  The separation from Jesus puts Peter in a group that will not help him grow spiritually.  They do not believe in Jesus.  Now, it is one thing to be surrounded by unbelievers when you are with Jesus, or surrounded by the enemies of Christ when he is with you. It is quite another to be on our own.  To stick with Jesus was to incur suffering, but to stick with the crowd was to be pulled into sin.  Hanging with the wrong crowd will always corrupt good morals and good decisions.  This connects to his third mistake.

Peter had shrunk back from suffering, but even worse, he was willing to say, or do, anything in order to avoid it.  This is where we all are in our flesh.  We do not want to suffer in this life.  It was important for Peter and the other disciples- and us- to come face to face with the reality that they were incredibly weak in the face of physical suffering.  This is precisely why Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is not a guarantee that our flesh will never get the better of us.  Rather, He is a guarantee that God is with us.  He also convicts us of the right course of action, and then empowers us to follow through.  The empowering of the Holy Spirit is not as we would like in our flesh.  In many video games, a person may gain an item that strengthens them.  Typically, there is a sound or obvious action that lets them know that they are now powered up, or invincible.  The Holy Spirit does not empower in such a way.  Rather, He empowers us as we listen and step out in faith.  Like Peter stepping out of the boat, it may seem foolish, but if God directs us then we can trust Him to support us.

Peter made many mistakes and he sinned grievously.  We can surely relate.  Let us remember the love of Jesus for Peter that later found him fishing on the sea of Galilee.  Peter was forgiven of his sins, even denying Jesus, because he was repentant and turned towards Jesus, not away.  Let us be thankful that the warning of denying Jesus before men is not about an unpardonable sin, but about something that can be repented of, that can be washed away, and can be forgiven.

Denying Audio

Finding Focus after Failure

Philippians 3:7-16.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Father’s Day, June 16, 2019.

Today, we take time to celebrate fathers; a blessing for which they did not ask.  Being a father can fill you with all kinds of moments in which we feel great success and, of course, great failure.  It is one of those things that we cannot fully appreciate until we have been put in the harness ourselves.  Of course, this applies to parenting in general.

Our passage today is not about being a father.  However, it presents a problem that is common within parenting, that of getting up from failure and moving forward.  What do you do when your greatest attempts and endeavors are found out to fall short?  What do you do when that little baby who has grown up yells at you and slams the door to their room, or storms out of the house?  Sadly, many men run from such experiences.  Our society is full of missing-in-action fathers who decided to never start in the first place (often despite the children they have helped create).

Yet, for those who bravely jump into marriage and children, the challenges can mount and overwhelm a person.  We seem to be confronted with our weaknesses and shortcomings at every turn.  It is a very intimidating situation, even a crucible of sorts. 

So, I want to use this passage where the Apostle Paul is explaining his come-to-Jesus moment.  In it we will discover the proper response to those moments when you are made aware of your failures.

Confidence in the flesh does not lead to Jesus

Paul often spoke against the religious mindset that focused upon its own religious accomplishments because this does not lead anyone to Jesus.  Oh, it leads to all manner of places, but never to Jesus.  Confidence is good if it is placed in the right thing.

Paul had been raised in a religious environment in which performance was everything.  In verses 4-6 of this chapter, Paul lists his credentials among the Jewish people.  He had been circumcised when he was 8 days old.  This was the required mark that he belonged to God.  He was also from the tribe of Benjamin, a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Thus, he was a true heir to the promises of God.  He was also a Hebrew of Hebrews, which meant that he was not one of those Hellenized Jews who adopted the Greek culture and mixed it, in varying degrees, with the culture of Israel.  He was a Pharisee, who prided themselves on exact, literal conformity to the Law.  His zeal was so great that he had been persecuting the Christians and even going to Damascus in order to seize more.  Lastly, his law keeping was blameless by the standards of his day.  Everything in Paul’s life told him that he was blameless and succeeding within his society.  Yet, the day that Jesus confronted him, he was made aware of just how greatly he had been failing God. 

Think about how we come from different subcultures within the greater USA culture.  Even Christians grow up within a subculture of the overall world-wide Christian community.  Each subculture has its own variation of what it means to be good, right, and successful.  However, those cultural trappings, whether religious or not, can blind us to our mounting failures.

Paul should have had his confidence centered upon God, but he had been taught to center it upon himself inadvertently.  On the road to Damascus, when Paul finally saw the light, he began to know just how far away from God he was, and yet also, that God still loved him.  I pray that today you may know that no matter whether you were a failure or a great success story, in regard to the subculture in which you were raised, God loves you too much to leave you alone.  He calls you to Himself through Jesus and says, “Put your trust in me.” 

Perhaps the greatest problem within Christianity throughout history has been the many men who were more confident in their ideas about Scripture than they were in the God who gave them.  On top of this is a similar problem.  Christians are often looking back to smart Christian men of the past and put more confidence in their great ideas about Scripture than in the Word itself.  Whether a group points to Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, or for Pentecostals, men like Charles Parham or William Seymour, or for the Assemblies of God, men like E. N. Bell and J. Roswell Flowers, it matters not what men your subculture points to and holds up as the great light to this generation.  What matters is if our confidence is truly placed upon Jesus instead of the reason of brilliant men.

Knowing Jesus is more important than the things we lose

Paul recognized that everything for which he had been working fell short of God.  He would rather know Jesus than have the greatest Jewish resume among his people.  Thus, he had to let go of certain things in order to know Jesus.  He had come to that moment of realization (my great works have fallen short), and chose to go after Christ rather than doubling down on his life’s work.  He let go of his standing and reputation within the religious community.  He let go of his potential within the leadership of Israel.  However, verse 9 also points out that he had let go of the righteousness of his own attempts to satisfy the Law of Moses, in order to obtain a righteousness that is from God through faith in Jesus.  The righteousness of faith in Jesus is diametrically opposed to the self-righteousness obtained by keeping the law.  Paul points to this as the great problem for Israel in Romans 10:2-3 where he says, “I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.  For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”

To know Jesus is more than to know information about him.  Yes, we want to learn about who Jesus was, what he did, and what he taught.  However, the words used for “knowledge,” and “know,” in this passage, include a knowledge that comes through a relationship with someone.  Paul doesn’t just want to go to school and learn about Jesus.  He wants to do life with Jesus.  His life would now be about learning who Jesus is through a personal relationship with him.

So, how do you have a relationship with Jesus?  You do so by faith.  You pray, you believe, you trust, you succeed, you fail, you repent, you keep your eyes upon Jesus.  I pray that today you will be struck with this desire to know Christ and not settle for anything less.

However, to really know Jesus, you must also get to know those major aspects of his life.  Paul wanted to experience and to learn about that same power that raised Christ from the dead.  He wanted that power operating in his life.  He also wanted to experience and to learn about the sufferings that Christ submitted himself to go through, even to the point of laying his life down for others.  Paul wanted his death to conform to that kind of death that Jesus had, which was a noble and godly one.  Ultimately Paul wanted to experience the Resurrection from the Dead himself, which is promised by Jesus to all believers.  There is coming a day when he will give the command and all the righteous saints of history will receive glorified, immortal bodies.

What do I do when I haven’t arrived yet

Fatherhood is a constant reminder that we haven’t arrived yet, and I’m not talking about the kids in the back seat droning, “Are we there yet?”  It is easy to get the wind knocked out of your sails when you are faced with your own failures.  In fact, it is easy to get angry, even filled with rage, as life constantly reminds us of how short we fall.  Yet, just as Christ was calling Paul to a different life that was not filled with hatred, anger, and rage, so Christ is calling us to let go of our failures and follow him.

Paul clearly says in verse 12 that he had not attained the list of the facets of knowing Jesus.  In fact, because the Resurrection is on the list, he still hasn’t attained that whole list even today.  Unless Jesus returns in our lifetime, all of us will close our eyes in death, realizing that we hadn’t attained it all yet.  But, God will not fail us.  He has set a time in which all of these things will be attained by all of the saints of all time together.  All of us will simultaneously enter into our full inheritance on the Day of Resurrection.  Wow!  What a day that will be.

Paul could have run away from his failures and away from Jesus.  Instead, he ran towards Christ.  Jesus is the “author and finisher of our faith.”  Yes, we are to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and work hard for our Lord, but we always remember that he will bring us through and finish us.  Yes, I haven’t arrived yet, but Jesus will get me there, just as he will get you there too.

Paul points out that he had to forget those things that were behind him.  We can learn lessons from our past, but we must not allow ourselves to become stuck in our past and frozen.  Paul had much guilt and shame behind him.  Yet, Jesus had forgiven him.  Have you ever noticed that we can still hold failures over our own head, even though Jesus says that he forgives us?  Faith is letting go and trusting Jesus.  Yes, you fell short.  Leave it behind you and move towards Jesus who promises to forgive you.

In fact, Paul was pressing forward to the things that Christ had set before him and us.  We first press towards those things that Jesus has for each of us in this life.  We don’t know what that will involve and everybody’s story is unique.  Yet, as we approach the end of our life, we must again press forward to those things that lie in our resurrected future.  Our greatest prize is that which we enter into at the Resurrection of the Dead.  All of us have to learn to get up and go to work.  This is what Paul is expressing.  He had to get up and get to work finding out just who this Jesus was.  Jesus is calling to each of us today.  “Come and get to know me!”

Paul ends this section with a reminder of our thinking, which he had been addressing back in chapter 2.  The mind of a person who keeps doubling down on their own accomplishments is not the mind of Christ.  Christ trusted the Father instead of trusting what he could do in the flesh.  He submitted to the cross and was rewarded with the highest honor of the entire universe.  The mind that is never too great to simply do what the Father asks us to do.  Failure is part of who we are as humans, but in Jesus it is not the final word.  If we will humble ourselves and press forward towards him, then Jesus will bring us to victory!

Finding Focus audio

Jesus Warns His Disciples

Although the disciples are arguing over which of them should be considered the greatest, in truth they are all about to do something quite the opposite of greatness.  They are about to fail in their trust of Jesus.  Yes, they had successfully followed Jesus so far.  However, in the next 24 hours they would flee from Jesus and hide, broken and fearful.  It is this universal rejection of Jesus by enemies and friends that ought to help us understand why the Lord does not accept good works, but instead will only accept faith.  He is not looking for those who are “great” neither as the world defines it nor as his followers define it.  Instead he is looking for those who will believe in his greatness regardless of the circumstances and to the end of their life.  Even this, the disciples all fail.  Yet, the Lord isn’t looking for a faith that has never fallen, but one that has been through storms, ups and downs, and yet returns to him.  The Lord is warning us in this passage to quit looking at our greatness and pay attention to the battle that is waging all around us.

Satan Has Asked To Test Them

In the next 24 hours Jesus will be arrested, run through a bogus trial, and publicly executed.  Jesus knows this and is speaking in order to prepare them for their own failures.  The disciples do not understand the gravity of what is happening, but the Lord does.  It is here that we need to remind ourselves that our strength is not in what we are, but in what the Lord is building in us.  We need to remind ourselves that even in our failures (perhaps especially so) the Lord is building up our faith in him.  Satan is moving to attack Jesus and destroy all that he is trying to do.  Yet, notice that Jesus reveals that Satan has asked to do this.  Who is he asking?  Although Jesus doesn’t say, it is apparent he means the Father.  Satan must ask permission to test God’s people.  This is revealed in the first two chapters of the book of Job.  Why would God allow such tests?  He does so to prove that our faith is genuine.  So what about the times people fail?  Even this can take a faith that is either disingenuous or weak and help it to be rebuilt on a proper foundation.  No matter how difficult we are tested, we are not at the mercy of the Devil.  If God is allowing you to go through a trial, He will bring you out the other side, and there is a way for you to be stronger.  It is in letting go of you and clinging to him through faith.

Satan has asked to sift them like wheat.  This metaphor is used to picture the process of testing their faith.  When wheat is sifted it is first beat and pounded in order to break apart the hard shell that surrounds it.  This chaff is then removed in one way or another.  Here a mesh of sorts would be used that would allow the small pieces of chaff to fall through, but the good wheat would stay on top.  Humans sift wheat in order to make its cooking and eating a better experience.  However, the Devil has a different purpose in mind.

He intends to prove that they are nothing but chaff.  He is going to pound and beat their faith through the circumstances ahead and he believes that they will all turn out like Judas.  He is going to keep at it until he wins or you die.  We see this in the book of Job.  After failing to get Job to quit trusting God, Satan complains that Job is only serving God because God has protected him physically.  “Skin for skin,” Satan accusingly says to God.  He goes on to declare, “But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”  He hates faith.  He wants nothing to be left for the Lord at the end of this testing.  He comes for nothing but to steal, kill, and destroy our faith.  This warning is not just for Job or Peter and the disciples.  It is for all who will try to follow Jesus.  If Satan thinks there is a chance that you have true faith in Jesus, He is going to come after you one way or another to try and destroy it.  “Be sober; be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.”  1 Peter 5:8-9 (NKJV).  You do have chaff in your life.  But, you are not all chaff.  The Lord will bring you through all your times of testing and reward your faithfulness, if you keep turning back to him.

Jesus Has Prayed To Help Their Faith

Jesus has told Peter that Satan has asked to test them all.  But then Jesus tells Peter what he has asked for them.  As opposed to Satan, Jesus is not asking the Father to test us.  Instead, he is asking in prayer for our souls to endure all the tests that Satan brings our way.  He is asking that we will not fail even though we may have times of falling.

In this passage Jesus specifically tells Peter that he has prayed for him.  However, in John 17:9-11 we see that Jesus has and will pray for all of his disciples, including us.  Yet, here he zeros in on Peter.  Why?  Most likely because Peter has been the most vociferous in defending his own greatness.  Let me emphasize that this is speculation.  But, one cannot avoid the clear rebuke that is given to all the disciples, but especially to Peter.  Yes, Satan has asked for Peter by name so that he can test him.  But, Jesus has prayed for Peter by name.  We may not have Satan personally trying to test us (remember he is not omnipresent).  However, we do have evil spirits that are in league with him and do his bidding.    More than this, Jesus Christ is able to pray for every single one of His disciples, even now interceding on your behalf before the Father.  He is praying for your faith to endure.  As it says in Hebrews 7:25, “Therefore, He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

Clearly Peter’s faith is going to fail, but it will be for only a short time.  Jesus is not praying that our faith will be an invincible, superman-like faith that never even blinks.  I am not saying that Jesus could care less if we fail.  Yet, he knows that we will all have our times of doubt and fear in this flesh.  In fact, it will be in his failure that Peter learns to trust in the power of God rather than in the power of Peter.  We cannot give mere lip service to this.  We are made stronger when we listen to the words of Jesus and repel the attacks on our faith.  However, we are also made stronger when after failure, we humbly cast ourselves on the mercy of the Lord.  Jesus lets Peter know he will fail.  But then gives him the task of strengthening his brothers when he returns (back in faith).  Jesus know that Peter will return and even has a job for him.  The word “return” is connected to repentance and conversion.  Peter will turn from the Lord out of doubt during the crucifixion.  But he will also return to him in faith after the resurrection.  His brothers are going to go through the same tragic failure.  They will need to encourage each other.  Not make comparisons among them in order to determine who is greatest.  We need to help each other overcome the world by strengthening each other’s faith in Jesus.  Our times of failing the Lord and returning to him can be helpful to others.  Do not hide your failures in shame.  Rather, boldly declare to others that the Lord brought you through your failures.  Peter’s pride still resists what Jesus is trying to teach us all, and most likely so does mine.

Verses 33-34, puts the period on this lesson.  Peter tries one last attempt to declare how great his faith is.  Perhaps here we see why Jesus focuses on Peter.  His flesh is truly great.  But it is not that kind of greatness Jesus is seeking.  Peter has to quit clinging to the greatness that he wants to see in himself, and surrender to the greatness that the Lord wants to make in him.  None of the disciples wanted to follow a messiah who was going to be crucified.  They did not want to be the inner circle of a messiah who left the earth.  They did not want to be men who would travel the world teaching people to believe in a crucified Lord.  But this is his call.

Jesus puts the death nail in Peter’s pride by declaring that he will deny Christ within the next few hours.  Reality versus fantasy.  Perhaps you too cling to a fantasy that somehow you are different.  Let it go.  Hear the warning of the Lord.  Today the Gospel is being tested in our society and Jesus along with it.  Our Lord and His way of living is being crucified publicly by our culture and many others around the world.  Some are falling away from the Lord.  Others retreat from the real Jesus and create a fake Jesus so that they can feel strong in their faith.  However, our strength is not in our inability to fall.  Our strength is in the mercy and grace of our Lord.  We can repent and turn to him and he will receive us.  This is the type of Lord that we serve, and this is what we must hold out to a lost and dying world.

Jesus Warns His Disciples audio